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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25264822">No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenhello/pseuds/Fenhello'>Fenhello</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, started as porn but then the plot took over solas pov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:14:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,132</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25264822</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenhello/pseuds/Fenhello</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He is no longer a formless observer or a shadow of a self that is little more than a dream. </p><p>He has a body. </p><p>He has parts that bleed and parts that make waste. He has hands that could travel where his eyes have been. He has a freshly formed callus between the middle fingers of his right hand from clutching onto his staff. He has a mouth that chews and spits and swallows. And his mouth could be the thing that finds her’s.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Female Lavellan/Solas, Fen'Harel | Solas/Female Lavellan, Lavellan &amp; Solas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The blackberries are smooth and small, and so dark that they shine. She offers a few of them up to him, cupped in her palm. He takes one and he bites down. He finds it sharp. Finds it sweet. Finds clusters of night bursting inside of his mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sensation is not usual enough to be called pleasant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That desperate drive of the body to sustain itself comes easily enough with the waking. Solas has never- not once in all of the months of wandering- forgotten to eat enough to get by. But remembering to taste? To feel for the subtle differences that come with the bite of a dry biscuit? The wet warmth of milk? The distant, near-dead waft of nostalgia that comes with the smell of sweet things fresh from their ovens? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It requires time he does not have, attention he cannot spare, and a desire that he does not want. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Herald shuts her eyes and puts fruit to her lips. A million small things seem to happen in the moment before she opens her mouth and before Solas looks away . </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Away and towards the bedraggled survivors of Haven, forming the lines of a caravan, twisting along the sharp spine of the mountain’s ridge. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he looks at them- frostbitten and battered- he becomes aware of an involuntary reaction. His nose pulls up and his mouth falls into the crevices of a deep frown.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is no army. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is not even a militia. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>True- with time- even the most broken can find pride enough to fight with purpose. With strong fingers, a burned and branded slave can reshape whatever will was bent by the masters who called them less than nothing. They can become a thing they would never have thought themselves capable of. With enough patience, enough understanding, they can be shaped into a warrior. With a cause, they can fight giants. With a company, they can level mountains. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But how much time is there? How much strength do these creatures really possess?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their weapons are buried beneath snowdrift. Their bodies are broken and their spirits are bruised. They have no leader. They have no clear plan of action. There are no simple steps ahead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they </span>
  <em>
    <span>are</span>
  </em>
  <span> walking. On and on and on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And at the end of the walk, there will be Skyhold. However it looks now, after these long ages.  Solas supposes- if he squints at it hard enough- that could stand for something like hope. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And there is a Herald. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone should check on the back, shouldn’t they?” she asks him. Finished with the blackberries, she pulls herself smoothly onto her brown hart and squints into the distance. “They’re falling too far behind.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Following her line of vision, Solas sees that she is right: the wounded and the oldest members of the chantry are lagging and there is a great gap towards the end of the caravan. Without the protection of the rest of the group, they could well be left open to the elements; to wolves and rifts and the bite of the cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas almost says yes to her suggestion on the spot. He almost sends her away with an order. Out of instinct, perhaps. Or muscle memory. Or something scarred deeply upon his spirit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is easier amongst the others, who see only his ears and his clothes and his staff and assume that the humble wanderer is an odd and esoteric thing- not one to be followed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Herald, on the other hand, sees the opposite. Her instinct is to be deferential, to ask his opinion and sometimes she speaks to him and it’s as if…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas stops himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He will give no orders. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not to her or anyone else. It would be dangerous to draw attention to himself by doing it. He isn’t so sure he can do it. In truth, he has not earned the right to do it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In another, deeper truth, it is a blessed relief not to </span>
  <em>
    <span>have</span>
  </em>
  <span> to do it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What is to be done about them, Seeker?” Solas asks the human woman riding near them. In lieu of a leader, the Seeker knows what it means to command, she strives to be honorable and is desperately sincere (if not a little too apt to give a heavy weight to things that are better off treated lightly).</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What can be done?” the Seeker frets. “Extra rations have not helped. And we have given up all of the transportation we can spare. All that we can do is hope that they can keep up.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Herald wrinkles her nose and shakes her head at this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You called them the stragglers and now they’re straggling. I’m not sure what you expected.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have an idea?” asks the Seeker. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My clan always lets the weakest set the pace,” the Herald explains. “If we put them in the middle, if we let them know they are valued and then push them gently from behind, they'll surprise even themselves with what they can do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her voice is level with conviction and Solas’ first instinct is to undercut it with counter-arguments. He sees castles of conviction all over this world-  walls built with stones and cemented by blood and reinforced with ignorance- and, by rights, they should all be torn down. In a perfect world, they would have been, leaving knowledge and wisdom and love and empathy to move freely and oscillate between shapes to suit the shifting of the seasons. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But everything is walls now. He has only himself to blame for that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> These people want to build something solid because they are falling behind, because they are all always dying and because after they die those heavy, ugly, severe looking castles of conviction will be the only thing of them that remains. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it surprises him that she thinks of other people. And it surprises him that she wants to help them, however she can. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I agree,” he says and she smiles at him- just a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her smile, breaking out over a usually solemn and focused face, is forever surprising him too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can try it out,” Cassandra concedes. “I suppose there is nothing to lose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good. I’ll do it now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And so The Herald of Andraste turns her indomitable focus to the task of herding cats,” Solas tells her quietly, curious to see if he could stretch that small smile a touch wider. Then he adds, “The cats will not stand a chance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just as she says:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The cats don’t stand a chance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pause they take in the moments afterwards cannot be much longer than a sharp intake of breath, but it seems to stretch on for an eternity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes are dark and deep when they meet his. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something painful flares up in his stomach. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then she darts her eyes to her hands and she laughs, high and musical and light. She laughs and then she coughs and stifles the smallest of winces. He remembers her cracked ribs and all of the bruises dappling her doe coloured skin. She tugs her bandages tighter and pulls the hart around, cantering down the rows of people as the mark on her hand glows bright and green. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is their last best hope. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not the shemlen’s. The </span>
  <em>
    <span>People’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> last best hope. His, really. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, at her suggestion, the Chantry March across the mountains changes and becomes driven by sails. The humans rip up tents and tarpaulin to catch the wind when it moves northwards, and they waft and flutter in the air. Solas watches them and they remind him of the Herald and her lips around the blackberries.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does not unpick why that might be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It requires time he does not have, attention he cannot spare, and a desire that he does not want.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>By the fireside, Solas susses out the scenarios. They will find Skyhold empty. They will rebuild. They will make the money they need to feed the men. They will find the support they need to sure up their strategies and the cycles of time that go on in an infinite loop will cycle around and cycle around and cycle around leaving Solas incurably bored by it in one moment and disoriented by the speed of it in another. </p><p>And, as always, he is plotting an exit strategy to stow away somewhere secret.  </p><p>A particularly loud burst of laughter or one of the more boisterous bouts of singing from the refugees occasionally cuts through his thoughts. But for the most part the people do not command his attention. </p><p>Until she is there, and her hand is as bright as her eyes by the light of the fire. The mark of the orb is wrapped around a plate, and the food is separated into very small piles. A portion of meats, a little of something slathered in red sauce, a rainbow of boiled vegetables and a tiny chunk of bread. She has taken all of the food on offer and simultaneously not taken enough. He thinks of the blackberrys again. He should look away. But then he is watching her eat, trying to find her tongue when she takes a delicate bite from the spoon. He watches her as she tastes, she savours, food and fruit, bite, chew, swallow, dead meat, life, transformation. </p><p>“Not hungry?” she asks, pulling him out of his thoughts. </p><p>“I am quite satisfied,” Solas lies. </p><p>“Varric is telling everyone that you eat fade essence instead of supper.” </p><p>He snorts slightly at the thought, “I would hardly expect a dwarf to know much about matters of magic.” </p><p>“Oh, he’s just being his usual hyperbolic self,” she shrugs. “I did try to explain to him that mages don’t work like that, but I think he prefers his version.”</p><p>Solas thinks of how he would hardly expect <em> her </em> to know much about matters of magic either. He thinks of her tugging violently at the veil, hand clasped tight around her staff like the fat fingers of a child drawing chalk scribbles onto stones. It’s clumsy, and strange and separate from the <em> should </em> of it all that gnaws at him more and more with every moment. </p><p>He does not think of her protecting him from the dwarf's gossip. He lets his eyes drift back to the fire instead. She is a shape just beyond his vision, made of smooth curves and straight lines and blocks of brown. The flames flicker through shades of gold and white and orange, the wood snaps and blackens. Her hair is a dark blur. The snapping fire sounds like distant thunder, like the ground rumbling loose. Her face is just beyond his focus. Something inside of him listens to the crackle, smells the ash and expects to hear the distant sounds of screams. </p><p>“Well, I know<em> I </em>don’t eat fade essence for supper at least,” she mutters quietly.  Solas lifts his gaze from the fire. </p><p>“No,” he agrees. “You appear to have developed a taste for the human’s food.”</p><p>The Herald looks down at her plate. She taps it with the spoon softly, her brow crinkling into a frown. He has offended her, he thinks, and that is why she stays silent.  Undoubtedly it is considered a taboo to the Dalish to even accept food from a human. Or from anyone beyond their small, paranoid, intolerant, ignorant little world. He forces himself to look at her vallaslin again. Not at the way the marks curl around her cheeks and makes the untattooed skin seem smoother and softer than whispers, but at the <em> thing </em> itself. </p><p>Echoes of a slave mark. </p><p>A howl of a failure. </p><p>A reminder to press onwards and onwards because the work is <em> never </em> done. </p><p>And then she looks up at him and it hasn’t worked. And she blinks quickly but he’s still watching for the drag of her dark lashes against the skin underneath her eyes. </p><p>“I nearly died, Solas,” she says softly. </p><p>There is a subtle shift in the way that she speaks. Her common is cut glass for the humans. For him, though, she rounds out her vowels. She says his name more closely than he has heard it in a thousand years. </p><p>The tiny vocal trick is pitifully effective, </p><p>“At the conclave and then again at Haven,” he agrees. “Both ill-advised attempts at heroism, I might add.”</p><p>“Oh pish,” she says with a smirk and a wave of her hand. “No. I just mean, it's different now. Now I….” </p><p>She breathes out, pained by something, </p><p>He watches her, curious and silent. </p><p>“I want to feel properly,” she admits, quickly, to her own hand. “I want to taste everything properly. All of this could go away at any minute and I….I didn’t <em> live </em> enough when I was with my clan. Do you understand what I mean?”</p><p>She looks up at him. Her eyes are almost orange in the firelight, but at the centre Solas sees twin moons of darkness. Blacker than blackberries. There is an endless, void-like quality to them. In one moment it seems like a window into the hollow insides of the things that inhabit the new world. In another, Solas feels as if he is looking at the ocean. Above the waves, the surface is all sparkling, and half-people bob about it like listless buoys. But beneath that there is a boundless, unfathomable darkness.</p><p>It is frightening.</p><p>“The current situation has granted a peculiar sense of impermanence to things,” Solas agrees. </p><p>They fall silent after that. And it is not the comfortable silence of two companions sitting together by the fire. It takes him a moment to register that he is still looking at her and she is looking at him, and without the pretense of a conversation and the cloaking noise of a dialogue edging into an argument, the looking becomes sharper and heavier and more potent. </p><p>He realises that he is <em> always </em> looking at her. And that she is <em> always </em> looking at him. And that the looking has been going on for months and months before Haven was lost underneath the snow. </p><p>
  <em> I want to feel properly…. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> The current situation has granted a peculiar sense of impermanence to things…. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I want to taste everything properly. All of this could go away at any moment….Do you understand what I mean? </em>
</p><p>All of it hangs in the air:  admissions, invitations, dangling threads. Would she pluck at one? What would happen if she did? Her eyes are still an ocean. There are secrets there, in the places the light will not reach. If he dove inside, plunging and feeling the froth and spray and the bubbles made of his breath, what would he find?</p><p>Emotions, maybe? Possibly knowledge? Or is there some wisp of wisdom moving in the darkness, caught up on the drift of the currents?</p><p>“But there are schools of thought that say searching too deeply for sensation on this side of the veil weakens one’s connection to the fade,” Solas says quickly, mostly to himself. </p><p>The dangling threads disappear. Perhaps they were never there to begin with. </p><p>“Do you believe that?” she asks. </p><p>“The veil is ill-studied. Tevinter puts all of its efforts into finding ways around it. The Chantry is content to hide behind it. And the Dalish prefer to construct stories over conceding truths about it,” the esoteric old fade expert begins to ramble. </p><p>“And do <em> you </em> believe it,Solas?” she repeats, pointedly ignoring his remarks about the Dalish. </p><p>He thinks about lying. But no, it is one thing to omit a truth about himself, but this is about the <em> fade </em> and that is another thing altogether. </p><p>“No. I do not. When we manipulate the primordial balance of the fade, we must feel for it. To properly enact a spell, we find the music and meaning in the matter of it. The waking world is a particularly effective teacher in this respect. It is why I have tried to travel it so widely.”</p><p>“Because there is music and meaning all around us,” The Herald nods and she closes her hand around the anchor. </p><p><em> There is not, </em> Solas fights not to say sharply. <em> There are only howling silences and pointless decay.  </em></p><p>She opens up her palm. It pulses faintly with the green glow of his magic. The snow around her feet is tinged slightly by the light of it, as though the energies have been poured upon the ground. He pictures it pouring inside of her too. Magic like a hand, reaching out, stretching, grasping into the void. And perhaps that is the thing that he sees when he looks into her eyes.</p><p>“It’s strange,” she goes on. “But I sometimes feel like the mark makes me feel it more than I used to.”</p><p>“The mark connects you to the fade,” he corrects. “Theoretically you should feel more of an affinity for your dreams than for your days.” </p><p>“And I do dream differently. But I learned underneath Haven that the anchor opens rifts just like it closes them, remember? It can bring the fade here. It’s an anchor. So it belongs to this world too.” </p><p>Solas is thrown. He frowns. </p><p>“I….had not thought of it that way.” </p><p>This world and the fade. It was an issue even before the veil. He remembers the barbed words aimed at his men and talk of the <em> Ghilan'him Banal'vhen. </em>He remembers how each one of the evanuris overshot themselves and how they strayed too far from one side to the other. Andruil drawn to the formless, endless night of the void. Ghilan’nain shaping creatures from the dirt. Dirthamen making himself a thing of shadows whilst his twin ate flesh and licked blood from his fists. </p><p>When Elgar’nan waged wars and conquered bodies, Mythal turned hers over to the people. Her children cannibalized her, like braying infants chewing a mother’s nipples raw </p><p>Over the sound of the drinking, someone calls her name. Done with eating, she picks up her plate and leaves him with a smile, saying:</p><p>“Then maybe I managed to teach <em> you </em> something, for once.”</p><p>His eyes find her as she returns to the rest of the camp, moving between the soldiers and her inner circle. But something about their conversation has ruined looking at her for him. </p><p>He’s already felt it before. The taste is smooth and sharp like blackberries and now he has a name for it, he is aware of himself looking. The fruit is sweet and dark. He is no longer a formless observer or a shadow of a self that is little more than a dream. </p><p>
  <em> He has a body.  </em>
</p><p>He has parts that bleed and parts that make waste. He has hands that could travel where his eyes have been. He has a freshly formed callus between the middle fingers of his right hand from clutching onto his staff. He has a mouth that chews and spits and swallows. And his mouth could be the thing that finds hers. </p><p>Perhaps it would be wise, Solas decides, now that they draw nearer to Skyhold, now that he has her trust and the trust of her companions, to establish a greater distance. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Each time he paints, Solas seems to approach it differently. One wall might be a process of quiet meditation. He sorts through all that he has studied, and remembers the secrets of the spirits he has talked to. Another wall is strictly utilitarian and the process is filled with purpose. It is a truth that has to be told. It is a painting and an argument all at once, saying <em> follow me to freedom </em>.  Another is an exercise in frustration, he forgets to simplify the forms and is lost in too much detail. The evanuris have gained more ground. Mythal has concerns. There is a careful plan, pieces in place. But he is fighting creatures with no regard for rules and for limits- so what is the point of his delicate, complicated, clever attempts to bend his own?</p><p>
  <em> Because far worse things will happen when he stops trying to follow them.  </em>
</p><p>When he paints the first wall of the rotunda, Solas surprises himself and imagines all of the old ascetic scholars. He mixes red paint to show a red dawn and can smell incense and see their shaved heads. They were the ones who used to practise abstinence. A kind of Uthenera before Uthenera, they called it, refusing food and drink and other worldly pleasures- all in the service of a deeper kind of knowledge. </p><p>Most of them were hypocrites. Obviously. But some were not. </p><p>Once, when he found himself growing tired of his youth’s endless climbing and fighting, Solas had found a kind of affinity with the ascetics. And later, in his centuries of slumber, Solas saw that they had been right. There was a weightlessness that came with the fade. There was no cold bite to the air and no body to feel it. Thoughts found themselves into the shapes of the spirits and lived in an endless kind of philosophical dialogue,  insubstantial, hypothetical, dancing. </p><p>But shaved head and simple garb notwithstanding, Solas has never been an ascetic. Not truly. </p><p>A real ascetic would have quashed their impulse to create. They would not have painted on the walls. Instead, they would have drawn with sticks upon the sand.  A real ascetic would have tried to tread lightly. They would not have left such terrible wounds all across the world. </p><p>Solas paints straight lines of light, fanning out from a great darkness at the centre of the heavens. The change in the air is subtle. Like the pressure of a hand brushing softly against the back of his neck. </p><p>He looks up. </p><p>Leaning lightly against the balustrades of the library is the new Inquisitor. She shifts slightly, attempting to look away before she decides to accept that she has been caught. </p><p>This is the distance he has managed. But he can still see her. </p><p>And she is smiling. And rolling her dark eyes at herself. And smiling. </p><p>So Solas continues to paint the walls. </p><p>First, a red dawn. Then a sword. Then a mage with a twisted staff, He allows himself this one attempt to stand in this world, balancing beauty and form with meaning and essence. </p><p>She finds him in the fade, trespassing into the labyrinthine corridors of his dreams with an unnerving, fascinating, purpose. And it is as easy to her as happening upon and throwing open an unlocked door.  She finds him and then she kisses him. And- more dangerously- he allows himself that too. </p><p>Her lips are soft and she tastes like heaven. In his arms, her body pushes close and her hands go stroking along his face and his neck. Like a gentle wave at work upon an eroding island. </p><p> </p><p>***</p><p> </p><p>But there are considerations, the island insists, trying to protect its banks and beaches and boundaries. </p><p>And what, Prideful Man, is there to consider? </p><p>She is an impermanent thing from an impermanent world and this will only distract them both. </p><p>It is ethically unforgivable to lie to her and still let her hold him in esteem. </p><p>It is impossible to tell her the truth.</p><p>And her eyes (and there is the question, always, of whether they are black and empty or whether they are filled up with a boundless depth) are terrifying to him. </p><p>So there is no alternative. There is nothing to consider. </p><p>And yet….</p><p>He is lonely. She is lovely. </p><p>Her loveliness increases from moment to moment. He watches her weather her duty with strength and she unfurls outwards like a flower with every triumph, every loss, every scar. And there are all of the small things too. Hot halla milk. Freshly picked blackberries. Horseriding. A book she reads to him aloud. A flick of her fingers that he watches for which means that her mana is low.  The feel of her residual energies scattered around the place where a rift used to be. A joke repeated enough times between the two of them that it feels like the start of a strange new language. </p><p>Then there is her body. Her fluttering hands and the delicate bones of her wrists. The flare of her waist. The curve of her behind. The skin on her shoulders. The sight of her in motion, the memory of it all pressed against him and the weight and the warmth of her lips. And every inch of him pulls and tugs and pulses with a selfish, stupid, primal scream that insists:</p><p> <em> I want her. I want her. I want her.  </em></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He is almost embarrassed to speak on the subject with Wisdom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spirit’s section of the fade is a favourite of his. Shrouded by trees, amongst wildflowers and ferns, he finds verdant mounds rising up from the ground and curving around into the shape of an intimate amphitheatre. Often Wisdom is at the centre, stood on the floor of intricate mosaic tiles. But just as often it is seated somewhere about the amphitheatre, perhaps in the higher seats at the back or closer to the front, listening or asking questions as other spirits drift into the area, to speak, to share stories, to enter into debates. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This time, he finds Wisdom alone, drifting and dignified, experimenting with physics to engineer a perpetual motion device from the raw fade matter. Great golden gears spin and twist and twine together in the air. They discuss it in his mother tongue for a while, both in the practical sense (here Solas takes the lead) and then in the philosophical (which is where Wisdom becomes most animated). Afterwards, they discuss the Inquisition. They discuss The Champion of Kirkwall and the Grey Wardens. They discuss the Inquisitor’s planned trip to Crestwood.  Wisdom shifts slightly where it stands when Solas speaks of accompanying her there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You wish to go with her,” Wisdom says, settling into the shape of a woman with grey green skin and grey green hair. “She wishes you would come. You miss each other when she is gone for too long.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wisdom does not look away from the perpetual motion device which still spins and will continue to spin for an eternity. It speaks quite casually and yet it speaks so deliberately. Solas feels in flashes. A pain in his chest. A sting of shame. A splutter of denial. The image of her eyes. The taste of her tongue. The weight of her body against his. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He presses his lips together. Then he laughs and hides and shakes his head at his friend, saying: </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It has been a long time since I have heard you sound so like Compassion.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Spirits of compassion have often spoken in my arena. I listen to them, as I listen to every spirit who speaks here. Their purpose is a noble one, and their kindness is </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite </span>
  </em>
  <span>compelling.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas thinks of the corrupted spirit of Compassion that the Inquisition has taken into its care; cursed to exist in a bleak world where comfort is alien to most creatures and where oftentimes the only kindness is a killing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you,” Wisdom continues, touching the glittering device in the air, shifting the gears slightly, pulling and changing, until, wondrously, the thing is made of reeds and pipes, taut strings, and xylophone keys. Perpetual music rises sweet and soft and beautiful from the perpetual machine. “Are changing the subject.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am not so certain that I know the subject on which you wish to speak,” he says, a little sharply. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is not true,” says Wisdom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because it is not true. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The music of the machine is pleasing to the ear. Yet it is too loud. He looks away and into the air. Wisdom’s sky is a reflection, like a mirror. Like the ocean. It reflects the verdant green of the amphitheatre and the wildflowers and the mosaic tiles. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She bears my mark,” he admits quietly, looking down at his own palm, half expecting to see the other side of the anchor sputtering bright and green inside of it. “She has my magic coursing through her body. We have both struggled with the draw of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The draw of the mark? Or the draw of her?” asks Wisdom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas shakes his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My own power manifest inside of ….an…</span>
  <em>
    <span>attractive </span>
  </em>
  <span>shape? My younger self would have been salivating. But I would hope, at this point, it is a vanity that I am old enough not to indulge in. For the Inquisitor’s sake as much as my own.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your own power?” Wisdom repeats. “Is that all she is?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What else would he have felt when he first took her hand and his fingers first felt the delicate bones inside of her wrist? How else to explain looking into her eyes at the very moment the magic of the anchor erupted from her palm? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did not know the mark would reshape the host entirely,” Wisdom goes on to prompt as he falls silent. “ Are you certain she is but your own magic?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He felt the whole world change.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m aware of the metaphor,” she says, all wry smiles and witty words, with lovely dark eyes that pull up from the ground and come to focus on him with a new and desperate kind of sincerity. “I’m more interested in ‘felt’” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>And so, in truth, is he. Interested in the feel of skin. In the feel of hair. In lips. In curves, in shapes, colours, in the taste of fruit and in the smell of her.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span> With a shake of his head, he shakes it away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is not relevant.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Isn’t it?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wisdom asks the question and reverses the machine, and sends it spinning in the opposite direction before continuing:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What evidence do you have that she is nothing more than your magic?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>These questions are not conducive to his plans. But he has asked himself the same thing on several occasions. Of the Inquisitor and of the others too. And least here, inside of Wisdom’s amphitheatre, the issue feels more hypothetical. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She is intelligent,” he tells the spirit. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have remarked upon the intelligence and cunning you have found in this world before,” Wisdom counters.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He has admitted as much to Wisdom in other conversations. He has considered carefully the steps he must take, and will no longer underestimate the people of this world. Some of them are as sharp and as narrow as knives. They can still cut, when their blades are turned upon him. He has the scars now to prove it. But mere intelligence is not an answer for her actions, nor is it an answer for her eyes and the pull of the depths of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Perhaps sensibility is a better word,” Solas decides. “The subtle empathy she applies to all things carries the same weight as the raw fade magic trapped within the mark.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is not particularly compelling evidence,” Wisdom points out. “There could be another explanation, could there not?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is silent. Wisdom intends to speak. Solas can feel it, holding an idea inside of itself. Something insightful. Something true. Some small thing of knowledge that grows and pulses and beats. And frightens him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is the mark,” he insists, cutting Wisdom off. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The pull of the mark is a thing he could fight. Otherwise, there is only the fall. He clings to the sides of the steep cliff and Wisdom sees this all too clearly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I worry,” says the spirit. “That you will be hurt badly before all of this is over.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas shakes his head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have slumbered too long. Hurt is ... a distant thing to me now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And here in the fade, the distance is easy to picture. Beyond blackberries, beyond his body, they drift, listless, on the edge of time and he does not wish to wake again.  The morning will come dense and slow, filled up with the ache and the stench and the bright lights. He does not want it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then I am truly sorry for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will weather it,” Solas tells his friend flatly.”But how are you? Tell me you are safe here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wisdom looks out beyond the verdant greenery. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The breach and the rifts exert their own draw. I have tried to stay clear of them- I have no wish to be wrenched into the world beyond. But others have not been as fortunate as I.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Guilt stabs at Solas as he reaches out to Wisdom, and tries to feel for something beyond the gossamer form of it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come with me to Skyhold. There will be some space in the fade there for you. It will be safer there. And I…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Close to Wisdom, he senses the endless current of knowledge, shifting through the ages. Inside of Wisdom is every thought, every philosophy, every secret of life. And all of it is kept and held just beyond his grasp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> If he could only reach that little bit further….</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the spirit resists any physical contact, even the imitation of it here in the fade. What he has imagined of his own hand drops through a celestial shadow. It stops his words short and reminds him that he is no spirit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I cannot be with you in Skyhold,” Wisdom reminds him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What the spirit does not say is:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>You have seen to that. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span> The weight he feels now is the weight of a single body and a thousand more besides. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas nods- any previous thoughts of the mark and the herald overridden by the urge to find a way to put this right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I must go,” he tells his friend. “I have agents to attend to.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Wisdom dies, Solas sees that he was mistaken. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hurt is not a distant thing after all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After the Exalted Plains, he goes back to the space Wisdom once inhabited and finds the ruins of the amphitheatre. What is left of the verdant greenery has become a dry and sickly shade of yellow, growing in lonely tufts amongst gravel and dirt and slabs of cold stone. The mosaic tiles where Wisdom once stood are cracked, broken and have lost all of their sheen. At the centre, the perpetual motion device still floats, still moves, but it is no longer gold. The endless machine is all stone and grinding gears, moving relentlessly, on and on and on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>With a jerk of his hands, Solas cuts the machine down. It crashes upon the mosaics and splinters into many pieces, collapsing in on themselves, spiraling upwards, bouncing across the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then there is silence and then there is the dark, and then there is the heavy feeling of loss.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he could only stay here and search for some shadow of wisdom. One last philosophical thesis, one last question debated, one last word of advice, one last </span>
  <em>
    <span>look</span>
  </em>
  <span> at his friend. If it took two thousand years, what of it? Time is the thing in pieces, dashed at his feet upon the floor. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the fade grows darker and he can sense the stirrings of the void. The abyss is at his back. It snarls and snaps and bites at his heels. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Solas puts his hands over his face, his fingernails digging into the skin and scar upon his forehead. He promises solemnly:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Never again. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes the long way back to Skyhold, travelling almost the breadth of the Exalted Plains. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sun scorches the earth and the bones and the ruins of the villages. There are bandits, there are soldiers, there are bodies. Solas slips away from them all like a shadow and stays upon the secret roads, lost to time but still scarred upon the memories of the fade. There are ghosts in the dreaming, revenants in the waking and an uncanniness to the air. A mountain, spotted in the distance, maybe, might be the thing to bring up a memory, unbidden. Everything is the same, everything is alien. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he is used to being alone. And he travels under the cover of stars, the constellations in the great velvet tapestry above him unchanging. When he is hungry, he kills rabbits. He picks blackberries from the hedgerows springing up about the riverbanks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tastes them. They are sharp and sweet and black as night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now and again he sees Inquisition flags upon the road. They flutter in the wind. Free and boundless, made of silk and soft to the touch. They tell him that he is nearing Skyhold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A week or so after Wisdom’s death, some Inquisition soldiers find him. He has barely reached the base of the Frostbacks, where the pine trees still grow and the melted snow flows down from the mountains into cool and glassy streams. He makes no effort to avoid them once their banners and their colours become clear. The Herald does not hunt apostates and her soldiers wouldn’t trouble elves, so he expects to simply pass them on the road. The unassuming wanderer will nod and they will go on their way, he thinks. Until one of them says:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Solas?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is so shaken to hear his name spoken by a stranger that he nearly says yes. Instead, he clutches his staff and waits in silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The soldier, a crudely formed, thick-boned human peers at him, then turns back to the other men. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bald elf apostate, right? That’s who we’re looking for, int it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could kill them before they drew their next breaths. The spell lingers at his fingertips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re to come with us to Skyhold. Inquisitor’s orders.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fade hovers around him, stuck still like a stagnant pool as he realises that this is not an ambush, but a </span>
  <em>
    <span>rescue party</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As if a parcel of soldiers would be enough for that, he thinks bitterly. Mostly to stop himself from thinking about the implications of the gesture. And so he returns to Skyhold with an entourage, the soldiers following him on horseback, escorting him along the mountain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They close around him and it feels like a cage, the soldiers and their swords on all sides of him. Holding his head high, refusing a horse, refusing water or food from the soldiers, he reminds himself that if the Inquisition has him, it is by his designs. It is in service of the orb and in the service of the people. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he sees her again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s coming down the stairs, dressed for riding (to </span>
  <em>
    <span>ride out to find him? No. She has other business to attend to. She should be focused upon her goals</span>
  </em>
  <span>) with her staff at her side and her hair sliding against her cheeks. He watches her eyes find him, and they widen slightly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There is another cage closing around him. And it has nothing to do with his designs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t think you were coming back,” she admits at the bottom of the stairs. “I was worried.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He confesses that he did not either. He confesses that he went to find Wisdom in the Fade. He confesses so much that he knows he must have missed her face and her voice and the weight of the world in the presence of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The next time you have to mourn, you don’t need to be alone,” she tells him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hangs in the air. Another dangling thread, amongst all of the others. He could pick at that loaded promise until it is picked clean. Is she promising him more mourning? Is she promising him companionship for a moment? For a month? For a lifetime? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He simply says thank you. In his head, he releases her from her promise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She can never know what it means to mourn with him. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wisdom is the gaping hole in his dreams. The space it once inhabited becomes filled with other beings. Rage stands on the stones and asks him to remember. First the form of the Pride demon on the Exalted Plains. Remember. Then the mages who bound his friend, who violated his friend, who pushed their ignorance inside of his friend and warped it beyond recognition. Remember. Rage tries to go deeper, ages deep, into the trembling of the earth, cracks of thunder and the distant sounds of screams <em> remember, remember, remember </em>until Solas wills it away. </p><p>Despair takes up the podium next and lectures to the open air that all is futile, meaningless, self-harm and pointless wounds. Solas sits with it for a full night of self indulgence, and its shadow hangs over the next morning. The Herald comes into the rotunda. She doesn’t say anything. She simply sits, with a stack of letters in her hands, upon the sofa, signing the papers she rests upon her knees. </p><p>And they pass the morning like that. Merely in the presence of one another. </p><p>She does it again the next day, sits in his room, the gentle scritch of pen on paper the only sound that comes from her. Once, when she is reading and he is reading, she looks up briefly and their eyes meet. Her expression is a determined one, as she nods at him and goes back to her papers. He realises that she- strange, solemn little creature-  intends to keep her promises. </p><p>
  <em> He is not alone.  </em>
</p><p>It occurs to Solas, in a sudden crash of inspiration like a great wave against rocks, that he could stand up. He could walk across to her, bend over the sofa and press his mouth against hers. He could taste her lips and her tongue and feel the warm, damp, heat rising in her. He could grip her waist, slide his hand underneath her shirt, stroking his fingertips along skin, rising and falling, her chest and his chest vibrating with the same feverish frequency as with a series of kisses they push and press and collide in as many places as they can reach each other. </p><p>Once, that is precisely what he would have done. They called him a hunter: dangerously focused, stubborn and singular in the pursuit of his goals. If things were different, if the world was different, if he were a younger, lighter, untethered kind of man, he would have had her a hundred times over by now. And, if the thing was done well, as he would want it, she would have had neither the time nor the energy nor the inclination to achieve anything else. </p><p>Instead, he shuts the book in front of him- a dull trifle published by circle mages, too obtuse to be enriching, too dry to be amusing, and almost sad with its stink of self- censorship- and then he sits back. </p><p>“Inquisitor?” </p><p>She looks up, startled at the sudden disturbance of the room’s tentative silence. </p><p>“Yes?” </p><p>“I understand that you are planning an expedition to Emprise du Lion in a few days?”</p><p>“That’s right. One of the Orlesian barons asked us for help- concerns about red templars in the area. The requisition lists are being drawn up a bit earlier than usual- we needed a little more time: I’ve heard it can get bitterly cold out there in the Highlands. Honestly, Haven was bad enough” she sighs and shakes her head. “But if the people need us, the Inquisition will help. And I’ll just have to go about in another layer of clothing, I suppose.”</p><p>“All the better to make it another three layers. Snow is, after all, one of your greatest adversaries. You never know when you might have to throw yourself under another avalanche.”</p><p>“No one is ever going to let me forget that, are they?” she sighs and laughs. “Well, Josephine will be pleased at least. All those layers and I’ll finally have a fashionable, human silhouette. With petticoats and underskirts and overshirts and all-around-shirts covering up every last inch of my body.”</p><p>“That, Inquisitor, would be a travesty of singular proportions,” he says solemnly. He does not mean to, his mouth and his muscle memory become momentarily divorced from his better judgment to pick at the low hanging fruit. </p><p>Is it better or worse that it makes her smile- just a little, covertly, to herself as she looks down at her book, tucking a curling strand of hair behind her ear?</p><p>Is it better or worse that he was certain it would?</p><p>“Why are you bringing up Emprise du Lion?” she asks then, “Would you like to come? I’ve been told there are more than a few ruins in the area. Or do you think there are rifts that want studying?” </p><p>She tries to sound mild and unconcerned and impassive, unable to hide an element of hope in the end of her question or the tilt of her head towards him and he thinks that she is desperately lovely. Even as he has to dash those hopes. Quickly, cleanly, doing as little harm as he possibly can. </p><p>“Quite the opposite, in actuality. Inquisitor, I am requesting that you take another mage with you. I would prefer to remain at Skyhold during this particular mission, helping the Inquisition here instead.” </p><p>“Oh,” she says softly, but she quickly corrects herself. “Yes. Of course. I’m sure Dorian or Vivienne would be happy to...well not <em> happy- </em> Emprise du Lion is apparently very cold- but you understand what I mean.” </p><p>“Yes, I do.”</p><p>“Imagine if more mages were as hardy as you,” she adds with a small smile. “The wandering, sleep-anywhere-apostate. We’d probably rule over the whole world.” </p><p>“And I suppose you wonder if that would be better,” Solas returns sharply. “Look to Tevinter and tell me if that is true. Or even look to-” and then he stops. He doesn't want a debate now. With Wisdom gone, they have begun to feel more meaningless. There is nothing to be learned now. It is all pointless one-upmanship and foolish assertions of pride. More like arguments. More like battles. </p><p><em>Oh, Wisdom.</em> <em>Would that you were still here. </em></p><p>“My apologies,” he starts. “I believe that I have not-”</p><p>“-I know. It’s alright,” she interrupts, soft and quick. "<em>Some</em> mages shouldn't be allowed to rule over anyone. I know." </p><p>Her hand reaches out, but not far enough. She stops it, lets it rest on the wide expanse of his desk between them. Her fingers curl slightly into her palm, and he puts his hand at the very edge of the wood too. Five inches away from her, he estimates, feeling the cold and hard surface beneath his fingertips.  </p><p>“Truly,” she insists, her dark eyes fixed on him with a deep sincerity that a man could easily drown in. “You don’t need to apologise. And you don’t have to come to Emprise du Lion. I’ll have a sweater made for Dorian, and then I’ll probably have to watch him burst into tears once it’s on.” </p><p>If he tries to rebuff her quickly and cleanly, and he tries to find distance with relatively little hurt, then she is unknowingly brutal and cruel simply by virtue of being herself: a person he has no desire to rebuff, a person he desperately desires to be closer to. </p><p>Her hand is five inches away from his. He remembers how it felt upon his face. </p><p>The situation is ironic on so very many levels. Solas is rational enough to acknowledge that. And it would be amusing, almost, if he didn’t consistently feel, around her,  as if he has just been stabbed in the chest.</p><p>**</p><p>That night, Desire finds him in the fade, wearing her shape, offering up all the things he cannot take in the waking world. Bending over the sofa. Kissing her. Sliding his hand under her shirt. Her breasts. The sighs she would give him. The pleasure he would give her, watching her tremble and writhe and call out his name. </p><p>“But you are merely borrowing her shape,” Solas has to remind the spirit. “And I doubt very much that she would have given you permission to do so.” </p><p>“And the permission is part of it,” the spirit of Desire acknowledges, with a suggestive curl of its lips. “Well,  more than <em>permission.</em> <em>Oooh. Oh. Solas, I want you,” </em>it sighs, toying with the curls and stroking at the body it has stolen. “<em>I need you</em>.” </p><p>“Precisely,” he says shortly, looking away and vaguely disgusted by himself. </p><p>The spirit simply wants to connect with him, it is fascinated by him, and like all spirits- in its way- Desire wishes to help him and give him what he wants, Solas knows that. </p><p>But he much prefers being with Rage and Despair. </p><p>“I could be someone else? Somebody dead?” Desire suggests. “The dead cannot give permission. They’re all long gone. So surely I should not need it?” </p><p>It sifts through the faded memories of long-dead lovers. The face of it begins to shift. The form of it broadens, grows taller. It changes between faces. Intelligent faces. Fascinating faces. Beautiful faces. A rare few that were kind. All of them murdered. All of them rotted like overripe fruit on the vine. Organs putrefied, flesh picked clean from bone, skin desiccated, skeletons crumpled into dust. </p><p>Desire’s shape snaps back, almost violently. Back into her form and her face, and it is brighter and more fixed than the others. For that is what he desires: without compromise, without substitution, and nothing else will do. </p><p>He is still single-minded and stubborn. In all things he is single-minded and stubborn. For better or for worse. But there is nothing to be done about it: old dogs are incapable of new tricks.</p><p>“I am going now,” Solas says as he turns away from Wisdom’s ruined amphitheatre. “You cannot satisfy me. My apologies, I am sure my presence must be frustrating for you.” </p><p>“Wait,” says Desire. It’s voice deepens. It shifts into another, insubstantial, sort of shape. “Will you not stay and talk with me a while, My Dear Friend?”</p><p>
  <em> Wisdom. </em>
</p><p>He breathes in sharply. And then breathes out, turning from the borrowed form of the spirit, looking out at the fade’s troubled skies. It takes a moment for the storm inside of him to calm. But then all is silence and all is still once more.</p><p>“I should not have interrupted you,” he confesses, looking out at the horizon. “The last time we were able to speak, I should have listened. You knew the uncertainty that was growing in my mind and yet I refused your council. My friend, I desperately desire to have it now.” </p><p>“I could suck at you?” suggests Desire wearing Wisdom’s guise. “That might make you feel better?”</p><p>The sound begins in his belly and bursts from his lips, rocking his shoulders and his chest. Poor, simple, spirit. Solas cannot help but laugh at it.</p><p>And then his laughter breaks, wrenched asunder quite completely, into weeping. </p><p>The next morning, for no discernable reason, Solas wakes as stiff as a rock.  He aches with it, his body pressed against his erection which is pressed against the lumpen mattress in his quarters. Shifting into it gives him the smallest spike of pleasure and a larger, desperate hunger for more.</p><p>In the fade, he can speak with Desire, he can reason with it, and even attempt to understand it. But on this side of the veil, he finds only the demons of his own making. Solas closes his hand around his cock, as his thoughts find the form of her, with her lips parted to eat blackberries and her dark eyes fixing upon him, permission be damned, reason be damned. He imagines her stripped of clothing. And her thighs parting. And then he imagines up the overwhelming, intoxicating sight between them: hot, lurid, pink, wet, with the pull of a promise as powerful as a rift. </p><p>Quick and rough and inelegant, he tugs on his penis for no more than five minutes before spilling fluid into the rag beside his washbasin. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A few nights later, he takes the image of Wisdom’s ruined amphitheatre, complete with darkened skies, and projects it into another part of the fade, many miles away. </p><p>There, a shadow is waiting for him. </p><p>It stumbles up and down the steps covered with dead grass, a slender gash of colour like a tear in the veil, gossamer hands waving in front of itself like the recently blinded. Solas watches it swipe violently at a curious wisp, and here it is less solid and less real than even the youngest, smallest spirit yet to be named. </p><p>It is pitiful and sad and strange to look at, wheezing and whining,<em> how do I get out, how do I move? </em></p><p>Unwilling to prolong the wretched display any longer, Solas strides forwards and finds the thing by the wrist. He sends a shock of electricity through it, beginning at the hand and moving up, along the arm towards the shoulder, the clavicle, neck, the head and down through the chest and hips and legs, a searing agony making it scream as slowly the form becomes slightly more solid, slightly more real. </p><p>“My apologies,” he says, when the cries have begun to subside. He has said it so many times now that his words sound brusque, rehearsed and insincere. But he still means it. He is almost certain he still means it. “I have tried to find other methods to aid your people with dreaming. But unfortunately, only pain has ever been effective.” </p><p>The agent of Fen’Harel heaves and trembles. Then it draws its head up and gasps afresh, sinking to its knees. </p><p>“None of that,” says Solas. “We can talk now.” </p><p>Even with a fresh focus wrought with tremendous pain, it is still not much to look at. They never are. Not like she was<em> , </em> when she found him in the dreaming, as clear as the light reflecting on the surface of still waters, as beautiful as she always has been in the waking world. </p><p>“Ser. Fen’Harel,” says the agent to the floor. “I did not knowing how this would supposed to go. Many sorry. Many. Many.” </p><p>“Speak to me in common. I do not have the time required to decipher your broken use of the language.” </p><p>How different things have become. It should not shock him. Ages have passed, wars have been fought and won, nations have risen and fallen, babes have been born, generations made, families made famous, families sunk into obscurity. And yet he will always think of the ways things once were. </p><p>He had friends first- equals in every way, who called him by name and who would never have kneeled. In some ways, on some days, when he is feeling particularly desperate for some small trace of nostalgia he can see part of them in the Inquisiton’s inner circle: there were nicknames that the dwarf would have approved of, questions that would have made the grey warden splutter with laughter, inside jokes that may have left even the qunari nonplussed.</p><p>He remembers a man- now gone- slamming the wolf pelt onto the table and declaring:</p><p>“It’s heavy and it stinks. Couldn’t see worth a damn in it.”</p><p>“I did try to warn you,” Solas told him. “The wolf is a difficult thing to wear."</p><p>"Mmm, what with its delightful aromas of stale sweat and smoke and I <em>dread</em> to think what else."</p><p>Solas raised his eyebrows, said flatly: "Such wit, such wordplay, my sides are splitting with laughter." And then he sighed, "But perhaps we should have done with it? It has served its purpose.”</p><p>“No. Don’t. The posturing is necessary. I daresay you will find more use for it in the days to come.” </p><p>“That seems entirely foreseeable, I’m afraid.”</p><p>“And you like it,” said his friend with a slight smirk, leaning against the table, a quiver of slow arrows swinging at his hips. </p><p>“I do not,” Solas insisted. He was lying then, but it evolved, over centuries, into a truth. “The sole good thing about it is that it can be shared. I do not have to wear it all of the time. I do not have to wear it alone.”</p><p>His friend chuckled. </p><p>“Oh Pride, you and I both know that- one way or another- you will not be able to share it for much longer.” </p><p>And he was right.</p><p> First, Solas had friends. Then he had men. Then he had followers. Now...preserve him, help him, damn him, he has these <em> things </em>. These agents. These twisted shadows. These fanatics. These...worshippers. </p><p>More than any other of the things that live upon this world, the agents he has recruited remind him of why the work must be done. </p><p>“What have you learned from the Venatori?” he asks the shadow in front of him. </p><p>“They are working to atone for Alexius’ failure. And working hard to achieve some level of credibility in government.”</p><p>“The magisterium would never allow that and never support their cause,” Solas decides with a nod. “Not just because they clearly follow the words of a mad man, nor because of the international catastrophe caused by publicly supporting such open nationalism: simply, the Venatori agents have been freeing slaves to work for them. And Tevinter would collapse without its slaves.”</p><p>“They have been freeing humans,” says the Agent of Fen’Harel bitterly. “The man who would have me call him master still keeps the elves slaves. Happily.” </p><p>“Under a system of slavery, freedom is a commodity like any other. To be bought and sold for services and profit.”</p><p><em> True freedom would only come with total collapse, </em> Solas thinks to himself. <em> And the cost of that is an exorbitant wager that a man will lose far more often than he will succeed.   </em></p><p>“But...if the Venatori don’t want them,” says the shadow. “I think the magisterium has many elves who would be willing to aid your cause. In some small way.” </p><p>“That is not the purpose I have put you to,” Solas says sharply. “Your master is a member of the Venatori and a scholar of ancient archaeology. Come to me with news of elvhen ruins, possible sightings, discoveries of my people- be they living or dead. Or failing that, information on Venatori movement.”</p><p>Rumours of a resurrected part of ancient history finding its way back to the Inquisition would put his position in jeopardy, Solas is sure of it. For the moment, he thinks, it is an unnecessary risk. The Inquisitor will succeed. She has made a promise of it. And she, solemn, strange, beautiful, creature, keeps her promises. The orb will be returned. The plan will continue as though it had never been interrupted. </p><p>And then he realises how willingly he has placed his faith at the feet at the Inquisitor.</p><p>She bears the mark. When the orb is retrieved, she will be his salvation. And then she will be his obstacle. </p><p>“If inquiries are to be made about possible agents amongst the slaves of Tevinter, do so with subtlety. If you are exposed, you will not be protected. Is that quite clear?” </p><p>“Yes, ser. Yes, Dread Wolf. Of course,” trembles the agent with reverence. </p><p>Wordlessly, Solas ejects Fen'Harel's agent from the fade. And the skies around Wisdom's ruined amphitheatre lighten into a swirling kaleidoscope of green. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>As always, the meeting leaves him occupied and troubled. Primarily with his plans, but now and again, odd voices drift into his head, belonging to other people who are gone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes in the air in the training yard: he has come to appreciate it again, the fresh smell of the snow in these mountains has not changed in a millenia. He shuts his eyes and the sound of the swords clashing whilst the soldiers practise is almost familiar to him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You used to want people who thought for themselves. Who </span>
  <em>
    <span>fought </span>
  </em>
  <span>for themselves,” he hears a ghost ask him with disdain. “Have you forgotten them all? Or do you prefer the ease of the blindly subservient in your old age?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have not forgotten</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he argues hotly with the ghost in his memory. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It is for them that I do this. It has always been for them. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks out at the training yard to where the Inquisitor is practising with The Iron Bull- a little sport to warm up before she leaves for Emprise du Lion. She is already dressed in her armour, with her riding boots.  The blade of the Knight Enchanter  glows brightly with spirit energy, almost as sharp as the glow on her hand. And she swings the spirit blade with a growing deftness, completely focused upon her task. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I had forgotten, I would have remained in Uthenera- where the dreaming is simple and the spirits are friends to me. If I had forgotten, I would not be here- I could have lived a new life, free from responsibility, free to go where I choose and act as I please. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Tossing the sword from her dominant hand, she casts magic, blasting energy. She fadesteps away from the kossith, comes back, blasts, switches, swings and the kossith growls “unfair”, when in reality she is simply on the edges of everything she ought to be. Her body tuned to fight with force, her mind turned towards the fade. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is so like and she is so unlike the people who were here before. She smiles at the kossith, and admits,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is what happens when you tell me about feinting in your blind spot.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pah! If that sword was just a sword, I would have had you. Quick tip: you’re still aiming for the small targets, arms and legs, as opposed to getting the timing right and holding out for the deeper blows. Stab me in the heart. Not in the shoulder.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got it,” and then she turns to Solas. “Solas probably spotted all sorts of problems with my casting, just like you spotted all sorts of problems with my sword handling.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A few,” Solas says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Care for a quick spar before I go? I could probably do with your advice. Plus,” she smiles. “I still haven’t found out your weakness.” </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If I had forgotten, I would not have asked her for time to think.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Her eyes shift between empty and full again. She is a shadow like the agent in the fade and she is as crystal clear as the light upon a still body of water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“With any luck, you never will,” he admits. “I am sorry, I have research to do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span> I would have gone to her, and kissed her. I would have held her, touched and been touched by her. I would have taken that smallest slice of happiness in a long and lonely existence. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He stands up and heads back to the rotunda. He shakes the image of a set of flat, emotionless eyes from his mind. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>I have not forgotten. I never forget a thing. Particularly my duty to The People. I am not like you, Felassan. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Again, he wants Wisdom, replaying the conversation in his mind that he had with the spirit. About the draw of the mark, and how he would fight it. About how it had clearly influenced her somehow, making her clear when the others were quiet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Solas?” he hears over the sound of his own thoughts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He loves the way she says his name. The sad and simple fact rings out as clear as a bell amongst every other cyclical argument and debate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not only is it as close to his mother tongue as the dying- nearly dead- language might ever be in this world, but it is not like the trembling agents savouring a persona and a title either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It just is. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it sounds exactly like: </span>
  <em>
    <span>I know you. I see you. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>He loves the way she says his name. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He should never have shared it with any of these people. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was a bit abrupt,” she chastises with a small smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Inquisitor, I was…” he trails off, unwilling to admit he was thinking- yet again, and possibly always- about her. “Do you have a moment?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is determined to finally get an answer to his questions. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>***</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It does not go well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To say Solas has seen his share of fiascos is to put things mildly: he has made more mistakes and seen more disasters than a wing in a library could hope to contain. This is another of them, to be filed and sorted and alphabetized amongst the rest. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, um...,” she begins, her eyes darting slightly towards the door when she confesses, “Not a very long moment, probably. I’m sure someone’s already trying to find me to tell me that the mounts are ready.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course, your visit to Emprise Du Lion,” he had momentarily forgotten, it seems. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the first problem. The second problem is that he does not adequately mask the existence of the first. Rather, he masks it </span>
  <em>
    <span>too</span>
  </em>
  <span> adequately. She has already caught him off guard, following him into the rotunda, finding his brow furrowed and his thoughts troubled. He smooths his expression, displeased at having even longer to sit and stew and think but taking care not to let it show. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No matter,” Solas insists. “I am sure that it can wait.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles, just slightly, the way that he has often seen her do. On her, it is enchanting and warm, given out for praise or for reassurance. When Solas gives it back to her, she stares at him as if he has sprouted a second head and then sits heavily on the edge of the desk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s wrong?” she demands, brow crinkling up into a frown as she crosses her arms. “Do you need my help? Is another one of your friends in trouble?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Inquisitor, there is no immediate trouble. And I would not ask you again if there was.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>A third problem. She uncrosses her arms, a clear stab of pain in the corner of her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Solas, we did everything we could for Wisdom . I thought you knew that I-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-I do know,” he insists, “That is not what I meant. I am grateful for what you did and I understand that you could not do more. I only meant to say that... I...have already asked too much of you. And I would not have asked in that instance if it had not been Wisdom,”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>glad </span>
  </em>
  <span>that you asked,” she stresses, standing up. “I’m glad that you let me in,” sympathy and sorrow dance in her eyes, churning up inside of the emptiness, “I want you to. I </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span>-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A knock at the door cuts her short. She looks up towards the eaves of the rotunda and lets out a strained and pained sort of laugh as a scout stands in the doorway and begins:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Inquisitor, I came to tell you that the-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-That the mounts are ready,” she cuts in. She sighs,turns to leave and then chews on her lip, looking from Solas to the door. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sees her standing and imagines her stuck between duties. Between her Inquisitorial expectations and the promise she made him after Wisdom. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Go</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he implores gently, wishing it and not wishing it all at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ten minutes,” she tells the scout. “Let them know that I just need ten minutes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The scout nods and leaves while she turns back to him and says, wryly:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somehow I doubt they’ll go without me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A perk, I suppose, of being the Inquisitor.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not that much of a perk. Someone will be back in six minutes when Cassandra starts to get impatient. We should go to my office: I can lock the door.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is the fourth problem. Her office is also her bedroom, a fact which Solas forgets when he follows her there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Skyhold, as it stands now, is a palimpsest of sorts: a page ripped from the spine of a story told centuries ago, scraped, washed and put into the service something new. But Solas can still see traces of its earlier incarnations. It isn’t necessarily in the bones of the structures and the brickwork: it is something deeper. Like muscle memory, perhaps. Or like essence. Or like a spirit that must always stick to its own particular purpose. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The walk up to her room feels like a recollection. He has done this before. He can feel history folding in upon itself, as two moments at opposite ends of time meet and then press up against each other. It is the very surface of the lake where a little boat sits, reflected in shimmering lines upon the water and he is no longer sure which is the real thing and which is merely the mirror. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The room smells of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One part of him is curious, his eyes searching for something amongst her affects that he is unsure of. Traces of the inside of her, perhaps? Like the paintings he is forever throwing onto the walls. She has organised books about Orlesian history upon the desk, letters placed into neat piles and a wooden halla statue holding them down. On the floor is a slim pamphlet containing a section of the chant of light- Solas has seen chantry sisters handing them out about the yard- lying face down as though thrown across the room. On the dresser is a bouquet of dried wildflowers, green herbs and blackberry branches. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other part of him bristles: this is far more intimate than he had anticipated. It keeps him from looking too closely at the bed- decorated in the style of the Free Marches- and imagining her laid upon it, spread out and open against the cool white sheets. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Swiftly, Solas escapes onto the balcony, where he is no longer enveloped by her things and her bed and her scent. It is clear, the day is crisp and cooler heads will prevail. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He asks- no, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>demands:</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“What were you like? Before the anchor?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Cooler heads do not prevail. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The fifth problem begins at the crook of his elbow, moving up along his arm towards his shoulder, his clavicle, his neck, his head and down through his chest and hips and legs.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Don’t go.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Her hand, </span>
  <em>
    <span>just there</span>
  </em>
  <span>, brings with it a spark stronger than electricity and more powerful than pain. With a firm but delicate touch she violently pulls the fade towards the waking world with a blinding light that spins his head, sparking every slumbering sense into a new reality. Harder than the fade. Sharper than the fade. Sticky with sweat, pounding to the pulse of blood in his ears, punctuated by the ragged breaths erupting from his throat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything on the outside of his body burns at her touch and begs for more, over and around, above and below, everything on the inside of his body cries with the raw intensity of an old wound ripped open and exposed, revealing a want, an ache, an emptiness in his chest, a desperate desire to find it filled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He grips onto her, trying to pour out the pain and pull in everything that she is instead. She belongs at the centre of him. And her mouth is warm and her lips are wet and her body arches, open and inviting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It is a mistake. A beautiful, heady, blinding mistake. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would have been kinder, in the long run, not to kiss her, it would have been kinder to leave, to be cruel and to cull the thing before it bloomed. But a drowning man will kick and thrust and fight to find a thing to hold onto. And if he loses her now, he will be left awake and alone in a body that is aching, in a place that is real and unreal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the moment, it is more than even he can stand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because of the sixth problem. Which has long been present. And seventh problem. Which is that he confesses the sixth:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love you. You are my heart.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And with that, once again, everything changes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To kiss her is one thing. To question whether he has been wrong about her people is one thing. To doubt, to fear, to want her, to long for her is one thing. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>To love her is another thing altogether. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he slinks off and away from her, a curl of disgust reminds him that those words cannot be unsaid. They cannot be rescinded. They cannot be erased. They cannot be unfelt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span> It tells him that he should know- better than anyone- how hard it is to hold back a sky that has already fallen. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Her travelling party leaves not long after. Solas watches them go from a space upon the battlements, The Seeker equipped with heavy armour that catches the light of a bright and unclouded sun, The Writer-Dwarf distinguishable by the crossbow upon his back, The Magister still inappropriately dressed for the climates of Emprise Du Lion. And the Inquisitor. </p><p>Who he has now kissed twice. Once in the fade, once on the slow and heavy side. And he knows now that she sighs when her neck is stroked, and he knows now that she alternates between accepting his desperate, open-mouthed kisses and gently enveloping his bottom lip between both of hers. She sucks and the pressure is subtle but his skin prickles and her body seems to whisper:<em> you are not alone </em>. </p><p>The shape of her gets smaller and smaller as she travels further and further down the mountain until her silhouette is no larger than a mote of dust upon the surface of a map that can be wiped away. He still watches, as if to catch some minuscule gesture from the minuscule figure in the distance. A moment when she looks behind her towards Skyhold, her fingers pressed to her lips, remembering. </p><p>Clouds pool and settle around the mountain peak, threatening to swallow up the retreating figures, but overhead all is wide and blue. </p><p>The effects of altitude upon the body are an observable phenomenon, even at Skyhold. The mountain air thins the blood- has been known to cause nosebleeds and bruised knees. In the initial climb, euphoria is common, the heady rush of a spark stronger than electricity, but then it is followed by deep depression, irritability and anxiety. He should never have kissed her. He should never have left things as he did, slinking away, all of the threads still dangling and unsettled. </p><p>Atop a high peak to the left of him, lies the frozen remains of a party of chantry scholars and circle mages. Solas has seen the memories of their last days in the Fade- exploring Almarri artefacts hidden amongst the mountaintops, studying the effects of the altitude on their magic. Straying from the path. Becoming lost in heavy snow, tiring, becoming crazed, starving and struggling to breathe, before lying down to die as easily as simply falling asleep. That was in the Exalted Age, some four hundred years ago, their bodies and their research never once close to being uncovered, save for the single Avvar tribe who knew the mountains well and could travel the length of them with ease and the old man who is accustomed to witnessing tragedies unfurl in front of him. </p><p>One must either acclimate, or one must clamber down from the mountain, or else risk becoming some secret, frozen monument to hubris and folly. So Solas leaves the battlements and continues with his day.</p><p>***</p><p>There are all manner of productive and important occupations to be undertaken in order to fill his time. </p><p>Solas does not want for activity and Skyhold still has secrets to uncover in the fade. Underneath the scrubbed pages of the palimpsest, are the dwarven settlers who constructed the chandelier in the main hall. They find ancient tunnels and spend decades burrowing an intricate web of smuggler’s caves and passageways into the bowels of the mountains. Written under them are the Fereldens who levelled the original structures- blasting what may have been salvaged and what had become ruin indiscriminately into little more than dust. And above it came the crude walls of conviction that still stand.</p><p>But he prefers not to dig too deeply into the castle’s history, where one might be tempted to become lost in the <em> what if </em> ’s of a moment that is long gone. Or one might become broken by the insubstantial, ultimately unsatisfying whisper of nostalgia. And he prefers not to find memories too close to the present and imagine, for example, on some long and quiet night, what spirits might have drifted up onto the Inquisitor’s balcony, feeling the lingering emotions of a kiss, a confession, and the words <em> Ar lath ma, vhenan.  </em></p><p>And if the Fade is not so effective in occupying his mind as he may have hoped, and if the fade is filled with memories of her face- flushed, her lips shimmering and parted- then, at least, the waking world is always changing, always filled with activity. The troops have been training, the Inquisition swells, and letters arrive on a daily basis. If he requires respite, there is always reading. Solas has reached chapter 18 of Hard in Hightown and the sword of Hessarian has just changed hands. And there is time enough to paint if he prefers that: the blank spaces of the walls of the rotunda wait patiently. </p><p>A week after he watched the party leave for Emprise Du Lion, it is the Nightingale who pays him a visit. Her pale eyes are lined with black paint to make them appear sharper as she peers out at the world. </p><p>At her gaze, Solas does not act surprised to see her, nor does he appear totally relaxed. Like so many others, her title moves through the world five paces ahead, and she will be used to finding that her feet have merely sunk into the deep imprint of <em> Left Hand of the Divine Justinia </em> , <em> Veteran of the Fifth Blight, Spymaster, Nightingale of the Imperial Court and Seneschal of the Inquisition </em>and as such, one completely at ease around her would be more likely to arouse suspicions than one who was not. </p><p>“Solas, You asked for readings of the rifts,” she says, a bundle of parchments in her hand. He reaches over his desk to shuffle through pages of poor handwriting that will need to be deciphered. “Will they be enough?” she asks as he skims and sees the reports from six locations in and around Ferelden. </p><p>“Six is more than I might have expected. But ten may have been better- particularly if the net were cast wider. With twenty, I may even be able to predict with some certainty where a rift will occur.” </p><p>The Nightingale laughs lightly at this, “Then the mages that were set upon the task may need more instruction.” </p><p>Solas frowns, “I included a detailed set of criteria with the proposal I sent to the inquisitor, was it insufficient?”</p><p>“Insufficient?” again, Leliana laughs “It was<em> too </em> sufficient, by the sounds of things. I read your proposal and naturally, it was all <em> le baragouin- </em>gibberish- to me. But it confused many of the mages too. A circle education, it seems, was not so comprehensive as your apostatic research.”</p><p>A curl of distaste has wormed its way into the back of his mind. <em> Circle mages </em>. Like the fools who killed Wisdom, wielding magic without finesse and barely literate in the language of the fade. He cannot help but speak curtly:</p><p>“Then I suppose I shall have to redraft the document in simpler terms.” </p><p>To illustrate the point and to see the conversation end, Solas finds a fresh sheet of paper and writing implements. But then a hand, small and pale is resting upon the sheet, a firm pressure holding it in place. </p><p>He looks up to find sharp blue eyes glistening in the candlelight as Leliana peers at him. </p><p>“I spent many years jealous of the way mages weaved spells,” she begins, slowly and carefully. “But that was before I learned to hone and appreciate my own little gifts bestowed by the Maker.”</p><p>“They say your singing voice is excellent,” Solas returns, as slowly and carefully as she. “And that the ‘Nightingale’ of your name is well earned. Not to mention the other skills required of a bard.” </p><p>“Quite. I also believe I was more inclined to be jealous of mages before I had the- ah- pleasure of stepping inside of a circle. What remains of the one in Kirkwall, for example.” </p><p>“Quite,” Solas echoes hollowly. </p><p>There is a long silence. Leliana taps idly on the paper, and if the mutinous body Solas has returned to desires to act unpredictably within the long pause in the conversation, if his palms feel the need to sweat, his pulse to quicken, his jaw to become set and his larynx to bob in his throat, Solas will fight it at every turn. </p><p>“Magic <em>is</em> a gift from the Maker,” Leliana finally goes on. “I have always believed it. But I do know that the Chantry has not always seen it so. If there were perhaps <em>people </em>that some <em>person </em>or other wished to protect from the eyes of Seekers and from Chantry Sisters...I suppose I could...understand why.” </p><p>As he listens to her words- pointed and deliberate as they are- Solas sits back in his chair. He says nothing. </p><p>“A few of my agents have been searching for your village in the North,” says Leliana with a slight raise of her eyebrows as she goes on: “I hate loose ends, but the Inquisition is growing, and its difficulties alongside it. If there is no chance they will find it, then those agents would be far more useful to us elsewhere.”</p><p>Solas feels his eyes narrow, and he swallows before he speaks: </p><p>“You have, I daresay, deduced that it is not…. strictly through some notion of altruism and civic duty that I joined and remain in the service of the Inquisition?”</p><p>He tells a truth because she is looking so closely for a lie. </p><p>“I have,” Leliana admits, almost cheerfully. </p><p>“And now that the Inquisition has taken in the rebel mages and they have shared their stories with us, do you believe that I was wrong to protect my privacy?” </p><p>“No, perhaps not,” Leliana admits, less cheerful this time. She sighs and sweeps aside a strand of loose hair emerging from underneath her cowl. “Divine Justinia would have fought to change that. I desperately hope that her sucessor will finish what she started. I desperately hope that Thedas will change for the better when all of this is over.” </p><p>“Perhaps, if both of us ever live to see that day, I will tell you more of my village in the North, Leliana.”</p><p>Satisfied, The Nightingale moves away from his paper, and Solas’ mutinous body finds it a little easier to breathe. But then-</p><p>“If a <em> person </em> truly did feel that these <em> people </em> were so important that he should want to risk his life to protect them, then I would hope that this person had at least someone to confide in about them,” Leliana looks at him sternly, “I am often in the rookery, directly above you.  I have seen the two of you several times. The way she looks at you. The way you look at her.  It is...quite lovely, really. But if there is something to tell her, it should be told...where is the romance in that kind of deception?” </p><p>Solas almost wants to laugh at the Nightingale’s comments and at her retreating figure, certain that she has imagined up some family, no doubt a wife and a parcel of mage children for him to hide from her and- by extension- the Inquisition,  the chantry and the Inquisitor. </p><p>But then he does not want to laugh. And something the strange bird says has struck true:<em> if there is something to tell her, it needs to be told...where is the romance in that kind of deception?  </em></p><p>The question lingers, almost like an echo in the empty rotunda even as he sets about redrafting his instructions on measuring rift activity until somehow, he looks down at the page and finds something wholly different in its place: </p><p>
  <em> Inquisitor,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I trust that this letter finds you well. Since our last conversation and in your absence, I have been able to consider my actions. I must apologize for my conduct and for my rashness.  I find that, in times such as these, the moments of commiseration are a rarity. No one deserves some slice of calm more than one who weathers the worst of this storm, but I cannot give it to you. Whilst I admire you greatly, the considerations are insurmountable. But rest assured they wholly reside in my own failings and not yours. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>  Whilst you may not understand now, in time you will.  </em>
</p><p>And he stops his writing abruptly.</p><p> It is not an unkind letter- in fact, it is the kindest letter the circumstances demand, but the twist in his stomach has all the cruelty of a jagged cut that leads to a slow bleeding. He imagines her, in the freezing Emprise du Lion, her nose tipped a little pink as it was in Haven, her fingers cold without someone to warm them, receiving that letter, the smile slowly slipping from her face, and then- when she returned- those blackberry dark eyes gazing at everyone (or worse still, another <em> some </em>one) who is not him. The thought is intolerable, and his pen twists in traitorous ways to construct something far far crueler: </p><p>
  <em> Inquisitor,  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Forgive me, but it seems- by some accident, I am sure- that you took my breath upon the balcony and left Skyhold with it still upon your tongue.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I believe that I must have dropped, erroneously, some aspect of my sight upon the stones between us. Whereupon it became affixed to the tip of your boot. For my left eye can look around, see the spaces where you are not- each lonely corner of Skyhold upon the lonely mountainside- but my right eye is with you, trapped and beguiled by everything that you are.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> How carelessly, after these mistakes, I should have misplaced my mind too. But I believe you might find it tangled in some strand of your hair. Look to the curl closest to your lips, as I strain to listen for some witty word or for the music in your laugh, and I think you will find the remains of my reason clinging to it.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And, most grievously of all, I am sorry to say that at the very moment of your departure I looked down at my chest and found only an empty space where my heart once lay. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Where else would it be but with you?  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I would have you keep them . My breath, my eye, my mind, my heart.  Hold them close and- </em>
</p><p>-Absolutely not. Solas takes the page in his fist and crumples it into a misshapen ball. He begins the task anew: </p><p>
  <em> Instructions for measuring rift activity.  </em>
</p><p>***</p><p>In the dreaming, reminders of her come from other sources too. Another stumbling shadow wanders into the ruins of Wisdom’s amphitheatre with concerns over the reach of the Inquisition’s forces, it’s troops and spies and diplomats spreading out into spaces that Fen Harel’s agents need to keep safe. </p><p>It is likely- and Solas has already seen it, in the questions she asks, in the myriad missions and services she undertakes- that an influence of efficiency, persistence, an eye for detail and drive for knowledge has already begun to bleed into the Inquisition. The disparate forces are becoming<em> hers, </em>much in the manner of those human wagons affixed with makeshift sails, catching the wind on the long walk to Skyhold. </p><p>Solas assures his agents that he will deliver detailed information concerning the position and movement of Inquisition forces and he steals into the war room one evening.</p><p>He knows the inner workings of the guards, he knows the secret tunnels laid by dwarves and it would be easy enough to slip like the wolf who stalks dreams into the closed chamber. But far more simple than that, Solas has the documents for gathering rift measurements, and the Inquisition’s fade expert merely strolls past the guards at the door. </p><p>Inside, the war room is empty, and the light of twin moons casts crisscrossing shadows upon the stone floor. The war table lies at the centre of the chamber, dotted with figures cast in brass and iron. </p><p>As he approaches, he sees that the Inquisitor has arrived in Emprise Du Lion, as expected, flanked by a small number of enemy forces- red glass inlaid in bronze to suggest Corphyeus’ red templars. </p><p>Solas lays his fingers gently upon the large table, felled from a tree, once planted in times of peace between people long lost to history, before being cut down and used in times of war. </p><p>He takes up one of the pieces, and toys with it for a few moments, setting his bundle of documents aside. </p><p><em> How would he do it? </em>He cannot help but ask himself. A small and hypothetical game takes shape in his mind as he stares down at the continent and at the pieces placed upon it.</p><p>The first war waged would be ideological. Corypheus is the perfect vessel for such a thing. An ancient magister with only tenuous affiliations to any pre-existing factions, a monstrous visage, a dangerous ideology and more than a few disasters under his belt. The more people who could be made aware of the threat of him, who could be convinced that the Inquisition and the Inquisition alone, the stronger the Inquisition’s power would grow. </p><p>And if there was any doubt, allowing Corypheus some small victories- another chantry here, a village or a city there, would help to bring the message home. Best if Ferelden could take the brunt of this damage. Its people are often patriotic, often honour bound, often prone to breed people who consider themselves heroic. They would make for easy, eager allies. </p><p>Solas moves a few pieces on the board. </p><p>As for Orlais? The best solution would be to bait and bleed them. Let the warring cousins continue their familial struggle, engage agents to sabotage both sides- target equipment not soldiers to encourage a protracted war of attrition. Deliver the empire from itself, provide bread for its people whilst the gentry ignores them. Strike only when the two sides have bled each other white. </p><p>The Free Marches would be easily done. Their governance is disorganised, handfuls of nobles ruling disparate lands. Hasmal, Tantervale and Ansburg are weak, and yet conveniently located along the Minater River. Take them and it would provide a tactical chokepoint for the rest of the Marches. Only Kirkwall is a concern, but it’s champion is closely affiliated with the Inquisition already by virtue of his friend the Writer Dwarf, if he could be convinced to ally with the Inquisition, the more the better. If something unfortunate happened to him during a visit to an old friend, it would be no great loss to the Inquisition’s cause. </p><p>To take Tevinter requires inside help. The Inquisition supplies the means, the weapons and works in the shadows for the most part. But if some willing member of the underclasses could be groomed, if some repeat of the temple of Sacred Ashes were to occur, Tevinter would fracture. </p><p>The Qunari in Par Vollen constantly wish to spread the Qun across Thedas and they would remain untouched, allow them to grow jealous of the Inquisition’s power. Force them onto foreign soil. The fighting would be bloody. But by cutting them off in several strategic points the battle would be won. </p><p>He turns his attention to the Anderfels, to Navarra, to Rivain, moving the pieces as he so desires. Loose pawns, Castles, Mages and then, finally<em> Knight to E5.</em>He sees her swinging her spirit blade, clad in armour, atop her hart, the mark filled with his own power sputtering in her hand. </p><p>Finished, Solas examines the intricate pattern of Inquisition forces strangling the continent. </p><p>It is a grim and immutable picture. And yet it cannot adequately express the ugliest parts of the work. By rights, the map should be stained through with blood. By rights, some of it should have spilled onto his hands and stained them slick and crimson. </p><p>But they are clean. And in actuality, half of the pieces he has coopted for forces are diplomats, dispatched by the Lady Montilyet. And in actuality, the banners of the Inquisition fly freely in the air, strangling nothing. And in actuality, when he followed them across the Exalted Plains they brought him closer to her, solemn and serious when she isn’t smiling, sensible and subtle until she places her hands upon him and draws him close to her warmth. </p><p>As Solas begins to return the pieces to where he first found them, to undo all of the damage done, in his mind, another letter takes shape: </p><p>
  <em> Inquisitor, </em>
</p><p>
  <em> You once promised that the next time I mourned, that I would not have to do so alone. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> It is a gesture that has meant more to me than you know- but I cannot help but wonder if you would have ever made that promise if you knew what it is that I must mourn:  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I mourn for a world where the fade found itself in every breath of every creature upon the earth. I mourn for glittering spires, for the pages of books that were more like memories, filled with sensations long lost to time. I mourn for the indigo waterfalls, for the rust-red jungles and the intricately carved spires so beautiful that my heart aches for want of words to express nothing less than sublimity.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I mourn for a proud people who understood eternity. For my home.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And I must mourn now for the man who might have loved you freely. Because I am not him. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> Instead, I go by other names. And you know them all: Dread Wolf, He Who Hunts Alone, Lord of Tricksters, The Great Wolf, Roamer of the Beyond, Bringer of Nightmares.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> I confess that once or twice- in my past, and more recently as well- I have been aware of how poorly I wear these titles. Poorer by far than you wear your own: My Inquisitor. My Herald.  My Heart.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And yet, in many ways, the titles are all too apt. And I wear them as well as anyone ever could.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> And I must wear them, still, for as long as I require to have my world returned to me. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> If it comes at the expense of yours, so be it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> If it comes at the expense of your affection, so be it.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em> If it comes….at the expense of your life…. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> So be it.  </em>
</p><p>Another grim and immutable picture takes the form of words upon an imagined page. It would be pure folly, of course, to ever make the ink marks real. Madness even. Desperately dangerous. </p><p>Travelling through the castle proper, he goes by way of the rotunda to fetch up Hard in Hightown. Apparently, at some point, a parcel has made its way into Skyhold and now sits upon his desk. Beneath the brown paper packing is a neatly bound leather book, filled with blank parchment perfect for designing paintings and made by clever Dalish hands.  The note attached to it reads:</p><p>
  <em>Solas,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I finally had some time to finish this. I thought that you might be able to find a use for it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>All is as well as can be expected in Emprise Du Lion, though the Red Templars have certainly left their mark and their scars upon the place and it's people. I have decided to extend our stay by a week, to help the people in the nearby villages, sift through the rubble and mend whatever has been broken here.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope that we can. I am sure that Emprise Du Lion used to be beautiful. You should see how the white paths melt into the snow and seem to go on forever, and the way that the icicles hang from the tall towers. We even came across an ancient elvhen keep during our travels- still with its windows and doorways intact. It looked as if it could have been carved right out of the ice. And it made me think of you. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>I can't stop thinking about you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Do you think that, when I get back, there will be a chance to talk? I hate the way that we left things. </em>
</p><p>The hand at the end is somewhat rushed, poured out before she thought better of it. But it is an excellent letter. Far better than any he could construct, and his fingers touch the words: <em>I can't stop thinking about you. </em></p><p><em> But where is the romance in that kind of deception?  </em>Leliana seems to ask him again, as he returns to his room and enters the dreaming, alone. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I feel like I should explain...this was supposed to be shameless solavellan smut, but then a plot and feelings and Solas being Solas got in the way of any strings free fun. If you like your porn on a bit of a slow burn, stick around. If not, I sincerely apologize. </p><p>Also, characters present are the characters in my main fic <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10209791/chapters/22657178">The Promise </a>. This little diversion stands by itself if you haven't read it, but this was written to complement that fic.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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